He was about to respond when Senzei coughed diplomatically: Tarrant was back. Damien stepped back from Ciani, putting a less intimate distance between them—but there was an unspoken challenge in his expression as he turned to face the Forest’s servant, and he knew without doubt that it communicated exactly what he meant it to.
“Can you pick up a trail?” he asked him.
“Unlikely,” Tarrant answered. “Not here, at any rate. A live volcano exudes its own fae, in quantity; that, and the strength of the northbound current, will muddy the trail considerably.” He looked up toward the crest of the cone, at the lights that marked the crater’s upper edge. “Perhaps up there it can be managed. Perhaps. There should be an inn, at any rate, and the three of you will want refreshment.” He began to lead them toward the narrow shoreline, but Damien stopped him.
“A live volcano?” he asked. “I thought Morgot was extinct. You’re telling me this thing could go off beneath our feet?”
“The verb you’re looking for is vulk. And as for this being an extinct volcano, there’s no such thing. Not in a collision zone. All we know about Morgot is that it hasn’t erupted while man has been present on Erna—a mere twelve hundred years. That’s nothing, geologically speaking. Volcanoes can have a period considerably longer than that. Ten thousand years—one hundred thousand—perhaps even longer.” He smiled. “Or twelve hundred and one, for that matter. So I would say that if you want to eat and get some kind of a fix on things we should start moving now. Who knows what the next hour may bring?”
“All the sorcerors in the Forest,” Damien muttered to Ciani, “and we have to get a smartass.”
She grinned at that. And he put his arm around her. And felt for the first time since leaving—the first time since the attack on the Fae Shoppe—that things were going to be all right. It would take a lot of work and one hell of a lot of risk to assure it . . . but that was what life was all about, wasn’t it?
The path up to the inn was steep and narrow, a winding switchback road barely wide enough for them to traverse single file. Rushlights bordered the path along its outer edge, illuminating a sheer drop down to the rocky shore beneath.
“Lovely place,” Damien muttered.
After what seemed like hours—but it must have been much less than that, the crater’s edge simply wasn’t that high up—the path widened out, and a broad shoulder developed along its outer edge. Soon trees became visible, their roots trailing down like tangled snakes, their bare branches breaking up the moonlight into webwork patterns across the road. As they continued, more and more trees began to crowd the shoulder until the harbor beneath them was no longer visible. Then they reached the crest itself—and they stopped for a moment, to gaze out upon one of the most infamous territories in man’s domain.
“So close,” Ciani whispered.
It was close. A mere channel separated Morgot’s northern boundary from the shore of the mainland; it could be swum, if one were foolish enough to try it. Ferries plied the distance even as they watched, and disappeared into the base of the caldera. Some kind of tunnel there, Damien decided. And: Hell of a lot of traffic for a place like that.
“You make assumptions.” It was Gerald Tarrant’s voice, disconcertingly close behind him. “Where there is commerce, there will be men. And the Forest holds its own in trade.”
But in what sort of goods? Damien thought darkly.
The inn at the head of the winding road was clearly a popular one. Half a dozen horses were roped to a lead rail outside the front door, and the stable-boy who ran out to greet them looked like he’d been used pretty hard for most of the night.
“Staying the day, mers?” he asked.
The travelers looked at each other—and at Tarrant—and at last Senzei answered, “Looks like it.” To the others he said, “Go on inside. I’ll unload.”
The interior of the inn was dim and smoky, rushlights serving as lamps along the outer walls. A fire burned in an open pit at the far end of the room, but it wasn’t quite enough to banish the autumn chill. Despite the cold, Damien chose a table far from the fire; it was quieter there, and somewhat more private. It seemed safer.
There were menus already waiting on the table, and Ciani opened one as she sat. She looked at it for a moment, scanning its contents—and then her eyes went wide.
“There’s blood on the menu,” she whispered.
“It’s a rough place,” Damien observed. He dropped his sword harness over the back of a chair.
Tarrant smiled coldly. “I don’t believe that’s what the lady meant.”
He looked at her. She nodded slowly. And said, “There’s blood listed on the menu.”
It took him a second to find his voice. “Animal or human?”
“Several varieties. I believe . . .” She looked at the menu again. “The human is more expensive.”
“Tastes differ,” Tarrant said quietly. “Morgot prides itself on being hospitable‘ to all travelers.”
“And what will you be having?”
He laughed softly. “Nothing, for now. I thought that while the three of you ate I might take a look around.”
“At the fae?”
“If it’s possible. There was a nice little clearing about a hundred yards back. It should offer as good a view as any. I’ll be back shortly,” he promised.
You do that, Damien thought.
Senzei joined them a few minutes later, their valuables in tow. Then a young boy, introducing himself as Hash, offered to serve as their waiter. The blood? he said, in response to Damien’s query. Quite healthy. Freshness guaranteed. Now, if the gentleman had a particular type in mind. . . .
Damien shuddered, and told him just to bring a drink. Anything that wasn’t red. He didn’t hear what Senzei and Ciani ordered; his attention was fixed on the door to the outside, his imagination fixed on the man just beyond it.
“You worried?” Senzei asked.
Damien looked at him sharply. “Shouldn’t I be?”
“Why don’t you go check on him?”
He started to protest, then stopped himself. And stood. “I will,” he promised. “If the food comes before I get back . . .” Then something has gone very wrong. “Eat without me,” he said simply.
He took his sword with him.
Outside, the night was cold. They hadn’t noticed it on the climb up—the climb itself must have warmed them—but now, alone in the darkness, he wrapped his jacket tightly about himself and thought, Winter’s coming. Traveling will get harder. Everything will get harder.
Coming up north didn’t help.
A short distance from the inn’s front door, he found a small clearing that looked out over the harbor. Gerald Tarrant was standing there, eyes slowly scanning the crater’s interior. Once. Twice. Again.
At last, Damien dared, “Anything?”
He hesitated. “Hard to say. A trace, perhaps. Hard to focus on. Nearly every signal is drowned out by the volcano’s outpouring ... very little is comprehensible. The image of someone watching stands out—not our quarry, I might add—and a taint at the harbor’s mouth which might have been left by the ones we seek. But as for when they left here, or exactly where they went . . . the interference is simply too great.”
“Like trying to search for a candle flame in front of the sun,” Damien said quietly.
Tarrant glanced at him. “It’s been a long time since I stared at the sun,” he said dryly.
Damien stepped forward—and was about to speak, when the slamming of the inn’s door warned him that someone else was about to join them. He looked back the way he had come and saw Ciani running toward them. Senzei was right behind her.
When she came to where the two men stood she stopped, and then hesitated; there was a sense of wrongness about her that Damien was hard put to identify, but it was enough to put him on his guard. Senzei tried to put a restraining hand on her arm, but she pulled away sharply.
“I want to be here,” she told them. Something about the cadence o
f her voice seemed oddly wrong, as though the words were being forced out. By her, or someone else? “When things are decided. I need to be here. Please. . . .”
“She just got up and left,” Senzei said. “I tried to stop her, but she didn’t give me any warning. I had to leave the stuff behind—”
Damien strode to her, quickly. His heart was pounding in a fevered rhythm he knew all too well, and he felt his sword hand tensing in combat readiness as he took her firmly by the arm and said, “We’re going back. Now. We can talk inside. You should never have come out here, Cee. . . .” And would never have, he thought grimly. Not without some sorcerous influence to cloud your judgment.
“—Too late for that.” Tarrant said softly. He nodded toward the trees on the far side of the road, to where motion that was not windborn stirred the dying branches. Ciani’s eyes, mesmerized, followed the motion. “They have us,” the tall man whispered.
And the creatures attacked. Not merely three of them now, but a band whose numbers had clearly been swelled by reinforcements. They came from the far side of the road, and Damien had barely a moment to reflect that if luck had been against them—if Tarrant had chosen that side of the caldera’s rim for his efforts—the humans would have been slaughtered before they could make a move to defend themselves. As it was, there was less than a second before they struck, and Damien used it. He shoved Ciani behind him, hard, and drew his sword in one sweeping motion. “Get her!” he hissed to Senzei—and thank God, the man understood. He ran behind Damien—unarmed, the priest noticed, damn the luck!—to get hold of Ciani before she could recover herself. So that whatever power had taken control of her mind, it couldn’t force her back into the center of things.
Then the creatures were upon him, and as he swung the keen blade into them he felt himself giving ground, trying to retreat to some position that would keep the enemy from surrounding him. There were too many, they were too fast, and there was simply no cover in sight . . . bad, it was very bad. If he’d had more than an instant to think about it, the fear might have frozen his limbs; as it was, he channeled all his tension into his sword blade, and it struck his first opponent’s blade with enough power to force back the crude steel, so that his blade bit into flesh and the creature’s blood—dark purple, glisteningly unhuman—began to flow. But it was only a drop in a flood tide of violence, and he knew as he recovered his sword that were simply too many of them, that sooner or later they must surely overwhelm him—
And then, without warning, light filled the clearing. Cold light that blinded but did not illuminate—that washed the moonlit battlefield in a chill blue luminescence, whose presence seemed to intensify rather than drive back the shadows. Tarrant, he thought darkly, as he brought up his sword to defend himself from another blow. Must be. He dared to twist his head around for an instant—only an instant—and saw the tall figure standing with sword drawn beside him. The chill light came from that slender steel and was as blinding as a sun to look upon; Damien fell back as his vision was seared into near-uselessness, trusting to instinct rather than sight to fight for a moment of recovery. He saw the blazing unlight arc, heard it bite into the flesh of their nearest opponent. An icy wind whipped at his face, as if the blow itself were sucking the heat right out of him. And then two of the creatures were upon him—or was it three?—and the whole of his energy had to go to fighting them off. He felt the shock of a sword stroke reverberate against his own steel, tried to draw back into a parry that would defend against his second opponent—but they were too fast, there were too many of them, and he felt sharp steel bite into his arm, releasing a gush of warm blood down his shirt sleeve. Can’t do it, he thought despairingly—and, with bitter determination: Have to. He was aware of Senzei behind him, struggling to keep Ciani out of the line of battle. Both of them unarmed. Helpless. He saw Tarrant swing again by his side, saw the brilliant unlight cut into another one of the creatures. But: Not enough, he thought. He felt the cold bite of fear deep inside him as he swung again, forcing one of his opponents back. Trying not to open himself up to the others while he did so. Not enough!
And then, everything stopped. Suddenly. It was as if the air about them had suddenly become solid; as if both their bodies and their minds had been paralyzed. For a moment, there was no movement—not even thought—only the physical shock of forced immobility. Utter fear . . . and wonder.
At the far side of the road, a figure stood. The cold blue unlight hinted at a form that was human in shape, tightly bound in layers of cloth. Female. Though only her face was visible, and that was without expression, Damien was suddenly overcome by the sense that she was suffering—had suffered—would suffer endlessly, unless he helped. For one blind moment there was no armed enemy in his universe, no Tarrant, not even Senzei or Ciani: only this one strange figure, whose need for his help overwhelmed all his defensive instincts, drawing him forward. . . .
And then the paralysis that gripped him shattered like breaking glass. He could hear Tarrant’s sharply drawn breath beside him, but he had no time to contemplate its cause—because they had turned toward her, all of them, and he could taste the hunger rising in them like some palpable thing, a tide of malevolence that made the bile rise in his throat. They were responding to the same image that he was, drawn by the woman’s utter vulnerability. But their instinct was not to defend, but to devour. Not to protect, but to rend. He saw them moving toward her and gripped his sword tightly, then lunged—and felt his sword tip thrust through the back of one of the creatures, just beside the spine. He forced the steel to shove through—blade horizontal, thrusting through ribs and flesh and out again through the chest, steel grating against bone as it passed. Then he jerked it out, hard, and prepared himself for a return assault. But there was none. The creatures were wholly fixated upon their prey, oblivious to all but their hunger and her helplessness. She had stepped back from the road now, into the limited shelter of the trees, and as the creatures moved forward to take her, as Damien moved forward to take them, he could almost see the power radiating forth from her, lancing forth to the moons and the stars and back again, a rainbow web of fae that shimmered about her like some translucent silk. Tidal fae, he thought in wonder, as he swung again. Targeting the head of one of the creatures. She’s Worked us all.
The full force of his moulinet smashed into the creature’s skull, shattering it in a cloud of blood and hair bits. The body of his victim went flying across the road, brains and bone shards spilling out across the feet of its fellows. It got their attention at last. The nearer one turned and looked at Damien—and blinked, like a man awakening from deep sleep. The priest thrust, but it was too late; the creature managed to dodge him, stumbling, and quickly backed away. He heard a muffled scream behind him, and the blood ran cold in his veins at the sound of it. Ciani? Where the hell was Senzei, and what was Tarrant doing? He didn’t dare take a moment to look. The woman’s spell was rapidly fading, and the creatures were but an instant away from attacking anew. He braced himself for a second onslaught—how many of them were there, now? Four? Five?—but to his surprise, they made no move toward him. He tried to advance and found himself suddenly dizzy; his left arm was warm and wet and becoming weak. How much blood had he lost? No matter. Against even odds he could stand his ground and parry, but against so many opponents he must press for any advantage, never let them regain the initiative....
They moved. Suddenly. Not toward him, as he had expected. Nor toward the strange woman, or even Ciani. Away. Their legs splattered with the blood of their fallen comrades, their feet treading on bits of bone . . . they ran. Bolted like animals into the brush. Damien moved to follow . . . and then stopped and drew in a deep breath. He fought the urge to look down at his arm and looked instead at the woman. She was still there, but the power surrounding her had faded; whatever she was, she was no longer Working.
Ciani!
He turned back toward the clearing, heart pounding. Toward a tableau that was as chilling as the one which he had just wit
nessed. Senzei lay on the ground, half-stunned, his stomach and side drenched in blood; barely two feet away lay the body of the creature who must have gotten to him, now decapitated. There was another such creature on the far side of the tableau, similarly dispatched. Whatever else Tarrant’s sword might be, it was efficient enough in battle. But as for the man himself. . . .
He stood in the center of the clearing, eyes blazing in hatred and defiance. In his right hand he still held the sword, and its chill glow made his pale flesh look like something long dead. And in his other arm . . . Ciani lay there, limp and unmoving, her one visible hand as white and as bloodless as ivory. Where he pressed her against him there was blood, and it trickled down from under her hair to his shirt sleeve as though binding them together. For an instant it was as if Damien could See the very power that linked them, and he stiffened as he recognized its nature. Hating, as he had never hated before.
“You bastard!” he hissed. “You were one of them all the time!”
The rage in Tarrant’s eyes was like a black fire, that sucked the very heat from Damien’s soul. “Don’t be a fool!” he whispered fiercely. The words came hard, as though he were struggling for speech. “You don’t understand. You can’t understand.”
“You did what they did,” he said. Seeing the flow of power between them, sensing the new emptiness inside her. “You took her memories. Deny it!”
Tarrant shut his eyes for an instant, as if struggling with something inside himself. Damien gauged the distance between them, Ciani’s position, his own fading strength—and then the moment was gone, and the black gaze was fixed on him again. Shadowed, as if in pain.
“I became what she feared the most,” the man whispered. “Because that’s what I am.” He spoke the words as if he didn’t quite believe them himself, and as he looked down at Ciani he seemed to shudder. Senzei, behind him, began to stir weakly—and the look that Tarrant shot at him told Damien that not all of the man’s wounds had been imposed by the enemy.